Empathy Is A Disease For The Weak
by Rambutans
Summary: Damian catches a disease from Dick. (Spoiler Alert: The disease is empathy.)


A/N: I started writing this a while ago, but never finished because I don't really like breaking up the flow of my stories by writing other stories, but in light of recent Damian related events that I won't speak about, I decided to finish this one. It's set pre-52, jsyk.

* * *

Damian had never known Grayson to be cruel. Angry, perhaps; irritated, certainly; surging with unbridled emotion, _definitely_; but cruel, never. Had he been paying more attention, he may have recognized the potential in Grayson to be this way, but quite frankly living with him for nearly a year and a half had made Damian soft in judgment. Things that once seemed just to him – an eye for an eye, a life for a life – now seemed viciously excessive. Grayson's physical affections which Damian once considered to be desperate and pathetic were now merely an uncomfortable nuisance. This, Damian believed, was the _only _reason Grayson's sudden cruelty struck so disturbingly close to his core.

It was an anniversary of some sort. Damian never kept track of them, there were so many in the Wayne family. He was sure that Grayson had learned to practice sentimentality from his father. Bruce Wayne organized sentiment like Gotham organized crime; poorly and with campy dramatics.

Grayson had stayed home all day to smother Damian with attention. There would be no patrol, he said, only fun. Damian had told him that if he wanted to have fun, he should give up crime fighting and go back to the circus. Grayson's smile faltered, but he took the comment in stride and tugged Damian into the kitchen where Alfred had breakfast waiting. Looking back, Damian thought, the day had been destined for disaster right from the beginning.

As it progressed, Damian's patience for Grayson's affections ran short and his quips became harsher and harsher in an attempt to thwart the abscess growth on his side that was Dick Grayson. As Grayson gradually became less emphatic, Damian assumed that his jeers at Grayson's origins were doing the trick.

He bit out one final remark while they were waxing the batmobile. Grayson had been endlessly praising his deceased mother's talents – cooking, crafts, singing, the list went on and on, acrobatics of course at the top. When he took a moment to pause for breath, Damian immediately cut in, "I don't know how you're expecting me to contribute to this conversation. Sometimes I feel like I am the only person in Gotham who doesn't have murdered parents, the way you carry on. How am I supposed to relate to you people? My parents are _both_ alive."

Damian did not actually feel this way. With his father constantly in other lands, expanding the Batman Incorporation, and his mother with the league, refusing to acknowledge his existence until such time that Damian saw his true path and returned to her, it wasn't so hard at all for Damian to sometimes feel that his parents _were_ dead.

The expectation was a chastising remark. "Damian, you shouldn't say things like that," accompanied by a wagging finger – maybe a bit of bristled hurt behind the eyes – but nothing too severe. Instead, Grayson watched him for a moment, and there didn't seem to be any hurt at all in his eyes. Then he calmly leaned over the hood of the batmobile, his rag wrinkled and stained with wax beneath his fingers.

"You know, Damian," Grayson said. "I'd rather have dead parents that cared about me, than living parents who can't stand me." He straightened and tossed his cloth at Damian who caught it easily. "Even _I_ can't stand you. I don't know why I thought it would be a good idea to spend the _day_ with you." Then he turned and left the bunker.

Damian listened to his footsteps echo around the corner of the hall, down a ways, and then finally disappear into the elevator that lead up to the penthouse. He finished waxing the batmobile just in time for dinner. Grayson never joined him.

[][][]

It was Alfred who spoke first. Damian sat at the kitchen island eating some sort of plebian soup. He had learned to adjust to the tasteless Scandinavian water that Alfred called a broth, but frequently Damian longed for the thick stews, heavily spiced and cluttered with vegetables and meats that he had enjoyed in the company of his mother when he was younger. Alfred offered to recreate them on the numerous occasions that Damian had complained about his cooking, but frankly Damian didn't trust the butler to do them justice and as a result, had stopped complaining out of fear that Alfred might one day actually follow through on his offers.

As he was polishing off the last of it, using the butt of a baguette to soak up any remaining soup, Alfred said, "Master Damian, could you tell me the date?"

Damian was sure that it was a test of some sort, but unlike Grayson and his Father, Alfred's 'lessons' made little to no sense to him, so Damian gave the only logical answer he could think of. "I see your Alzheimer's has finally caught up with you, Pennyworth."

Alfred smiled. "It is the twelfth of July, young master."

Damian groaned and pushed his finished dishes away from him. "Okay?"

"The twelfth of July is also the day on which Master Dick lost his parents."

Despite his best efforts, Damian's face managed to contort into a scowl without his consent. He said nothing.

"Perhaps it would behoove you to seek him out and offer your condolences."

Damian's frown magnified. "It is not my responsibility to coddle him. Grayson is perfectly capable of dealing with his own emotional needs _on_ his own." The scrape of his chair reverberated through the living room and kitchen as Damian scooted away from the island.

"You do still have to live with him, Master Damian. If not for his sake, then for your own, perhaps you should learn to exercise an amount of tact."

"-tt-" Damian left the room at a steady, stalking pace and ignored Pennyworth's fading sigh behind him.

[][][]

He sat at his desk, a blank page stretching across its surface and a pencil in his hands. Normally Damian preferred to draw with pen, but tonight he craved the gritty scritching of a too-sharp pencil dragging across sketch paper.

It wasn't as though Damian felt bad. Mostly, he felt uncomfortable. Grayson was a gentle creature and while this annoyed Damian a majority of the time, it was also largely the reason Grayson was able to put up with him. Damian _knew_ that he grated on people.

On the rare nights when sleep refused him, Damian would sometimes lie in his bed with earbuds pumping music into his brain, isolating him from the world outside of his thoughts, and he would wonder what might be wrong with him. There had to be _something_. His mother instilled a sense of deep pride and perfection within him from an early age, but since he had come to live with his father, and then Grayson, everyone around him seemed to be making bold hints at the opposite.

Drake couldn't stand him, and the false front of friendliness that he put up in Damian's presence was sickening. Todd was no better. The man seemed incapable of taking him seriously. Most times when Damian threatened him he would laugh and say something along the lines of, "What a cute little guy you are," then offer Damian a piece of candy. Damian's father exuded condescension. It was nearly impossible to have a conversation with him without feeling belittled. Damian still remembered the first words out of his father's mouth upon his return. "Is that _Damian_, in a _robin_ costume?"

The pencil snapped suddenly between his tightened fingers and Damian remembered why he so often drew with pen. His vision blurred, the image in front of him fading out of focus, and Damian lifted a hand to rub the tired from his eyes. His fingers came back wet.

[][][]

A cry of rage and disbelief rang through the penthouse. Dick's head snapped up from the files scattered across his desk and for half a moment, he thought of running to Damian's room. It would be a lie to say that Dick wasn't still emotionally bruised from Damian's behavior that day, but more than hurt, Dick felt embarrassed. He had never wanted to be anything but understanding with Damian. He just made it so _hard_ sometimes.

Still, Dick thought of his parents, how they would have handled Damian. His father wouldn't have had any tolerance for the boy, but his mother would have made up for it, spoiling him every chance she got. Between the two of them, they wouldn't have known how to help Damian, but it was hard for Dick to channel _both_ of them at the same time.

After Damian's howl dispersed, there was the sound of a door slamming and footsteps drumming down the hallway. Damian burst into the office with red eyes and wet cheeks and it took a moment for Dick to even register what that _meant_ because just about anything was more likely than the obvious.

"Damian…" Dick turned in his chair, immediately at attention, but hesitant to approach Damian for fear that he might turn tail and stalk off – or just hit him and stalk off. "What's wrong, what happened?"

"I hope you're happy." Despite the clear tremble in Damian's lower lip, his voice came out as strong and accusatory as ever. "You've given me your disease."

"What…?"

"I don't deserve this." Damian said and pointed a finger at Dick.

"Tell me what happened." Dick scooted his chair closer. "Was it a dream?"

Damian scoffed and threw his head to the side, rolling his eyes and muttering words of disbelief under his breath. When he was through, he said, "I am upset."

"About what…?"

"Are you dense?"

"_Damian_-"

"Apparently the idea of causing you emotional upset has antiquated in my own emotions staging a mutiny against me, resulting in _this_," Damian pointed dramatically to his own face, "unacceptable outcome."

"I'm…" Dick said. "I'm a little lost."

Damian stared. "Pennyworth informed me of the date."

"The – _oh_." The wheel of Dick's chair rumbled against the hardwood as he finally rolled it off of the rug. "Damian, if this is about what I said to you earlier, I'm… I'm sorry. I shouldn't have, I just – you know exactly what to say to a guy," Dick let the hint of a smile form across his face before he reconstructed his expression into a neutral state.

"You knew exactly what you were saying and you meant it. Don't apologize for that."

Dick's mouth twitched in confusion and his eyebrows arched. "What do you want me to say, then?"

"Nothing," Damian said.

"So… I don't mean to sound rude, but why did you come running in here?"

Damian huffed and crossed his arms. "I thought you should see the fallout of your actions. It's your fault that I've become this way."

Dick wasn't sure what to say to this, so he reached towards Damian only to have his hand swatted away.

"Do not touch me." Damian said.

"Damian… feeling bad for hurting someone's feelings isn't… _bad_." Dick said, resting his arm back in his lap.

"I do not feel _bad_! And I am not the one who hurt your 'feelings'," the finger quotes were a bit much, but Dick remained silent. "You hurt them on your own by being so damn sensitive about everything!"

"Why are you crying, then? Because of what I said to you?"

"No!" Damian's cracked on the word and he swallowed after he said it. "This has nothing to do with that. Please Grayson, what do you take me for, I am not the emotionally driven ape that you are."

Dick dared to scoot forward again and got a severe eye from Damian. He held up his hands and said, "Even if, at the time, I meant what I said to you, I don't mean it anymore and if I could take it back now, I would Damian. I'm sorry that I hurt you…"

"You _didn't_-"

"I'm going to hug you." Dick stood from his chair.

"Grayson, don't you _dare_-!"

Dick had his arms around Damian before he could even make a death threat, and while Damian didn't hug him back, Dick was _sure_ he felt Damian lean into him if only slightly.

"You disgust me." The words were mumbled into the front of Dick's button up and Dick squeezed Damian's shoulders.

"That's okay, I still like you."

Damian scoffed and Dick let him go.

"Alfred told me you've been watching 80's slasher movies." Dick said and ruffled Damian's short cropped hair. He received a punch in the arm for his efforts. "You want to watch one with me? I don't think Alfred's found that carton of chunky monkey in the freezer yet, there's probably some left."

Damian didn't consent, but he followed Dick down the hall and into the main room where he began setting up a movie while Dick scavenged the kitchen for junk food and the chunky monkey ice cream he had hidden behind Alfred's frozen meats in the back of the freezer.


End file.
